


that long and lonely train of thought

by Domoz



Category: Critical Hit (Podcast)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-18
Updated: 2014-03-18
Packaged: 2018-01-16 04:34:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1332052
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Domoz/pseuds/Domoz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>fic prompt: Write about ket and orem almost freezing to death + the followup</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

You hope you get the chance to be embarrassed by this later.

This being that you’re currently huddled together with one Orem Rivendorn who’s not so much shivering as violently shuddering over and over again.

It’s cold.

The wind blows and you say a rude four letter word.

Strike that, it’s  _freezing._

A thought strikes you and you say, “Take off your cloak” and he jerks back from you and gives you a look near as cold as the weather.

(if this were another situation you would make fun of how red his nose and cheeks are right now. Now is not the time)

He says, “Are you crazy?”

And you explain, while taking off your jacket, “If we use what we have together as a sort of a blanket, it”ll hold in more heat”

Which pacifies him for the time being.

—-

It’s getting colder, you think.

Your ears hurt. Orem’s are red to the point where you doubt he can feel them anymore.

At this point his whole face is pressed to your chest and he’s hunched over himself like he has a stomach wound. His shivering seems only to have gotten worse.

(You’re shivering too but not nearly as badly. Your thoughts go vaguely like  _well that’s what he gets for being stick thin like that_ )

—-

You try, halfheartedly to joke about sharing body heat and getting nude.

He says, cut it out, this isn’t the time.

—-

He says “Oh god. I just realized” And pulls himself away from you again. You say “what?” and he says, ‘I’m an idiot, I know how to make fire. Prestidigitation.”

(He stutters all of this)

Then he kind of tries to snap his fingers and for a moment there is a bright flash of fire that’s gone as fast as it came.

Orem says a rude four letter word. He keeps trying again, in a panic. He says”My hands are shaking too badly. I can’t.”

You say, “To be fair, I’m not sure if sitting in a  _bonfire_  would thaw us out now”

He doesn’t say anything, just lets out a tiny groan. He looks like he’s about to cry, although you suspect if he did the tears would freeze on his face.

His head falls back onto you again. He’s still shivering.

—-

The both of you are just a mess of shaking at this point, so you don’t really notice the extra movement as something climbs from your pack onto your shoulder.

Gai says “What’re you shaking for?”

You say “It’s dead  _freezing”_

You get in an argument with him that basically ends with him saying that its not as cold as the ninth circle of hell, you asking if he’s ever been there, him being very vague about it and then you telling him that if he’s not bothered by it than to  _go find some help_.

He goes, and you know he can’t go that far from you but you have to hope hope he can go far enough.

—-

You watch your own breath against the air and find it all too easy to imagine the next puff not coming. Then you notice that your ears don’t hurt anymore. Actually nothing much hurts from the cold anymore. You’re just kind of tired.

It occurs to you after a moment that Orem is no longer shivering.

So you say “Orem?” and he doesn’t so much as move.

You say the rudest four letter word you can think of.

Your mind races as fast as it can (which under the circumstances is rather sluggish.)

You figure that if you wait around any longer you’re going to die like this. You then figure that if you go an look for help you’re also going to die terribly, but that there’s also a tiny, miniscule chance that there’s someone out there.

So you do this:

You check to make sure Orem is breathing at all (he is, barley).

Then you wrap him up as best you can in his own cloak.

And then you wrap your own jacket around him for good measure and lie him on the ground in a position that looks like it’s going to hold in the most heat.

And you walk out into the storm.


	2. Chapter 2

It’s hot, and that doesn’t make sense because it should be freezing.

Open your eyes- you’re looking at someone’s back; when you look up can see that it’s Ket.

_And then you recall what happened._

You are suddenly very panicked because last you recall was being huddled up next to this guy and then… what, dying?

You don’t think if you were dead that your fingers and toes and the tips of your ears would hurt. But you know you were damn close.

So you sit up fast and look around

(You and Ket are both wrapped up in furs and lying in front of a fireplace – complete with fire. You’re in a cabin, you guess)

Someone behind you says, “Slow down there!”

You don’t slow down, you whip around to face them.

There’s this half elf lady, braided brown hair, bow on her back, leaning over with her arms on a chair. She holds up a hand, says, “You almost died there, you know”

You blink, there’s a thousand questions that you want to ask, from  _where’s my stuff?_  to _what happened?_

You say, “I know”

But you look confused enough that she gets the hint and says, “So you want the story, then?”

You nod.

She says-

“Well I found your friend there-”

Gestures at Ket

“Well, he kind of found me, wandering out I the snow, no jacket on or anything. He was flipping out about his friend-”

Gestures at you

“dying so he led me to that cave you were holed up in. You were pretty near gone at that point so we got you bundled up and loaded you up on Varri-”

Gestures to a huge wolf in the corner that you hadn’t noticed until just now.

“He held onto you on and we ran you up here as fast as we could. Lit a fire and put you down by it.”

She scratches her chin

“and that’s about it. Your buddy there somehow managed to stay conscious the whole time but he collapsed as soon as we got you in here.”

Frowns, shakes her head.

“He’s not doing too hot”

She waits as you process that all. You look over at Ket, who, now that you’re looking isn’t breathing all that deeply.

She says, “I’ve seen it before, where a person’s body basically shuts down from the cold but there’s enough going on in them left to keep breathing”

The feeling you get is is like a hollow hole in your chest. Your panic has subsided to slightly less intense panic.

“Um” you say, trying to think of something, anything “Where’s my stuff?”

She gestures back towards the fire, where your cloak and Ket’s coat are folded up, where your both of your packs are, are your weapons have been lain out.

You stare at them, grip at the blankets.

You have  _no idea what to do_.

Behind you she says, “I have to go patrol, though. That’s kind of my job. Just, uh. Don’t break anything.”

She calls for the wolf, opens the door- says, “Don’t go outside, either. This storm is probably gonna last a few more days at least”

And then she’s gone.

And you sit there, sick to your stomach.

Shakily you stand up, look around. The cottage isn’t that big- there’s the chair and two more besides, a door that you check leads to a cellar, a small kitchen area, and a room hardly big enough to hold the bed that’s inside.

There’s a bucket of water and some cups so you get a drink of water and go sit by the fire again.

You don’t know what to think about all this.

You consider your fingers, which smell a bit funny. After a while you decide that something got put on them to help with the frostbite

Mostly you watch Ket and worry. You hardly know basic first aid and you have no idea how to help, or if you even can.

(You realize after a while that she said he was wandering around without a coat on. And you see this his coat is folded up with your stuff and your heart feels like it seizes a bit when you realize he must have put it on you at some point. You wonder if he’d be awake now if he’d kept it on).

-

The ranger comes and goes with her wolf, always says that there wasn’t much out there.

She says that you can get whatever food you want from the cellar- that’s what it’s there for, and that there’s a water pump right outside if you need to get more- its enchanted to not freeze.

There’s firewood in the cellar, she says.

When she’s around you chat with her to distract yourself- she gets exited listening to the stories of your adventures and shares some of her own.

But,most of the time she’s not in- she goes out to patrol for people, like you, who get lost in the storm, every third hour, and that there’s two other similar lodges that she stops at.

So, mostly, you’re alone. Ket doesn’t change at all, Gai won’t respond to you anymore than opening an eye and hissing at you.

At one point, when she’s around she sees you looking over at him and says, “Not to crush your hopes, but if he doesn’t wake up soon he’ll probably die from dehydration”

You feel your insides freeze in place. At your lack or response she laughs nervously, “But, if he’s really as great of a hero as you’ve been talking about then I’m sure he’s got something up is sleeve”

She leaves again not long after that. You stare blankly at your spell-book.

There is a brief moment of fear and hope when he starts coughing in his sleep but by the time you’ve kneeled down by him the moment has passed and it’s like nothing has changed.

You kind of loose track of how long you’ve been there- the next time she comes around she says you were out for nearly a day, and you count how many times she’s been around and figure you’ve been there almost two days more. She says the storm will blow over tomorrow, most likely

(they’re kind of magic, she says she’s pretty sure there’s a strong connection to the shadowfell here that makes the storms so bad).

She leaves, again.

You don’t really have an appetite, but you know that you should eat, so you go down the the cellar and pick through what’s there (it seems the elven granola is following you- but there’s some meat too, you think it’s venison).

And when you walk up the stairs, before you even get to the top you realize that there’s something different about the shadows.

And you stand in the doorway and see one Ket, sitting up, awake, and looking confused.

You feel your stomach drop out and your head get light all at once and you practically run over to him (and your legs are wobbly and give out right as you get too him but it looks like its on purpose).

You reach out your hand to touch him and then pull back because you notice how shaky you are.

He blinks at you once, twice, scrunches his eyebrows and in a disgustingly hoarse voice says, “How long was I out?”

You have to fight against your own throat as you say,”Nearly three days”

He says “damn” but his voice cracks and it hardly comes out as a whisper. You remember the dehydration thing.

So you get him a cup of water and watch him carefully as he drinks it. He puts the cup down and looks at you and then looks Gai, who is curled up on his pack- they start having a conversation you don’t understand.

And as it goes on you feel the sickness replaced with relief. And as it goes on, anger, too.

You wait for him to finish the conversation- he’s pinching the bridge of his nose.

Your voice doesn’t even shake when you say, “What the hell did you think you were doing?”

He moves his hand, looks at you, “Talking to Gai?”

And you say “No, not that. You were out there- you left your coat with me. You could have died! You almost did!”

He gives you a frustrated look, “You weren’t  _moving_. What did you want me to do?”

You grab his shirt, you’re near yelling at this point, “I damn well didn’t want you to  _die!”_

Your voice wavers at the end, and the fire is gone. Your head sags and all that’s left is the tightness in your chest and throat.

He says “damn”, it’s quiet on purpose this time.

You  _feel_ him sigh- realize your head in on his chest and that you’re much in the same position you were when you were freezing. He puts a hand on your back- you’re holding to his shirt tight enough that your hands are shaking from the effort of that, and not the reason every other part of you is shaking.

You’ve been thinking about it a lot over the past few days, but you feel especially strongly now.

You really, really, absolutely do not want to loose Ket.

In any sense of the word.

You more feel than hear him say, “We both came out of it fine, though. So-”

You shake your head, you say, “Ket”

You can actually feel his heartbeat in your forehead.

You say, “Ket, I am about to do something very silly, and very stupid”

And you take a breath and move your face up to his and kiss him, right there.

He’s stunned for just a moment and then he’s kissing you back. And you guess you shouldn’t be surprised that he’s good at this, but he really, really is.

Your hands hurt from how tight you’re holding on to him.

Without warning the door opens and the ranger comes in, you pull away, but the tone of her voice reveals that she  _saw_  when she says, “Good to see you’re awake”

You are both very pleased and very embarrassed when Ket chuckles.


End file.
